Varius: Clustoria
Warning: The following story contains a tiny bit more swearing than in most Blasterman stories. I'd give this a PG-13. If you haven't read Varius, download the PDF and do so before reading this sequel! Part I: New Guns, Same Ship Chapter I: Oh, and also the Same Idiots --May 18th, 4062-- "Wow, it’s actually been a year since we got flung to the Clustoria Galaxy, and we’re heading back," Commander John Relian says to me. He's right, as commanding officer of the starship Varius, I, Captain William Borali, should remember the incident. We met the Blarius, stole their drive technology, flew home with it, and burned the thing out before we could neutralize the trail. According to the scien- tists on Faloin, that is. "You're right," I say, "the ship's been in refit for the past three months. What have they done with it anyways?" "Oh, just the usual. Warp drive update, computer enhancements, MPBG enhacements, et cetera." "Well that's no fun at all!" "Oh, and twin hypercharged plasma cannons." Nifty, but they could've added four. Or six or eight, the bigger the better! John leads me to a hangar control deck with a big "X" on the door. We walk in, and are greeted by Admiral Blasterman himself. "Will, John, you two are fortunate to be going through the Clustoria gate. It's the first trip since it was activated," the Admiral says. He beckons towards the lift. I'm beginning to wonder if the Varius is in there, since the shutters on the windows are closed. We step in the lift, close our eyes, and go down... She's in there all right. All three-fifty by one-fifty by sixty metres of her. "Oh...my..." I start. "GOD!" John finishes. The hull has been refinished with a layer of experimental absorptive hull plating, and those nifty cannons have been placed underneath the cockpit. All forty-eight of the crew members are standing by the starboard side of the ship, facing the lift and control deck. "And she's all yours," Blasterman gently elbows me. I walk to the little gap of people to the red-bordered airlock, punch my identification code into the panel beside it, and the doors open. The inside colour is a pale and navy blue scheme, much better than the previous grey-ish one. John walks in behind me. I think he's impressed. "So what are you all waiting for, y'all should get in before we take off without you!" I yell. The crew piles in, nearly knocking me down. "We're leaving now," I say to Blasterman. He smiles, and closes the airlock. John and I nearly run to the the cockpit. Still the same, lowered, two seated, wonderful little piloting zone. I take my seat, and he takes his. I run a computer check to make sure that both of the airlocks are closed. John gets the engineering room on the comlink and tells them to activate the reactor and propulsion systems. I press a few buttons on the inter-ship communications panel. "Varius to Control Deck, acknowledge." "...Admiral Blasterman here, Varius, you are cleared for launch. Ready to decompress the hangar when you are." "We're all set here, the warp reactor is powering up right now. Decompress the hangar bay." A few seconds pass, and the reply comes. "Decompression complete, opening hangar doors." I watch out the front window as the black void slowly comes into view. I feel back at home now. "Launching in three... two... one..." I say. "YEEEEEEEHAAAAAW!!!!" John screams. I power up the landing system, start hovering at just the right altitude, and go to one quarter sublight speed. The drives kick in and the ship lurches forward. Now I'm really home. The doors close behind us, and I don't even look back. John contacts the Core System gate control, and they power up the gate ring. I can feel the new prospects already. "Setting course for the gate," I say, boosting engine power to full sublight speed and entering the gate. It works! Nifty! I press a few buttons on the communication panel, and contact gate control on the Andromeda side. "Varius to Andromeda gate, we're clear on the other side, put us through to the Eagle," I say. John smiles and punches me in the ribs. "Soo, shall we start looking for Blarius to shoot?" Oof, that was actually a hard shot. I'm not sure if he's kidding or not about the mindless target practice. I think he's leaning toward the not. "Blasterman would hate this, but he's over a hundred thousand lightyears away. Power up them plasma cannons, buddy, we're gonna shoot us up some aliens!" I yell. John laughs and pulls off the sealed cover to the weapons activation panel. I start scanning for Blarius bi-space signatures. They're easy to find, since the damn drives rip holes in space. Fun. "Found a hole," I say. "They just came in, approximately... One-twelve light-hours, direction of fourteen-mark-oh-six. Setting course, powering shields and armour enhancements. Warp eight." "Six and a half minutes till whoop-ass time for the Blarius cruisers," John says. I agree, this will be awesome. "Dropping from warp! Charging plasma cannons!" John says. The indicator flashes to tell me the hypercharging is done. I pull back on the throttle and do some index finger exercises. "Almost in range... three... two... one..." Locked and loaded. "We're in the zone, do it now!" Hehehe! I pull the trigger, and bluish-violet (with a hint of red) plasma bolts fly out from the emitters under the nose. I watch in evilness as the glowing shots speed toward the patrol craft. "Impact in four... three... two..." A plasma explosion puts four nice-sized holes in its victim. Then the big shockwave occurs. The bi-space generators tear apart, sending a shockwave through space and impacting with us. John grabs hold of the stabilizers and pulls us back to a regular position. "That was fun," he says. Then, out the front window a bi-space tear forms, shooting out a patrol craft, out of control. John presses some buttons on his panel and blasts the crap out of them. I send us out back to the gate at warp three. We drop out of warp, and I notice a small outpost has been set up outside the gate on our side. They must have set up a nice little RRR base for us. In the middle of possibly yet another war zone. And the Silver Dragon is docked there. It freaking dwarfs the station, which is not much bigger than six or seven times the length of the Varius. I open a channel to the station. "FUS station, this is the Varius, please acknowledge." "This is Clustoria Station Zero, welcome, Varius," Says the voice on the other end. I recognize it, it's Vice Admiral Shooter Dude. "We detect your plasma cannons have been recently fired, did you run into any trouble?" "You could say that. We found a weakness in the Blarius bi-space drives, request to dock to discuss it." "Permission granted, opening doors." "Thank you, Zero. Varius out." I pull us in to place for automatic docking, I'm so excited I might crash if I try going in manually! I walk into the station's bar. John's hitting on the cute bartender, I wonder if the chain of command applies here.. Shooter Dude walks up to me. "So how do you like our little station, Will?" He asks me. "Eh," I say, "It's pretty nice. Would hope for a drink that's not watered down around here." He laughs and sits down. "So you like yours strong, do you? Computer, two shots of Kilathian spirits, unwatered. You have my voiceprint." A beamer light shimmers and a pair of cylindrical glasses about five centimetres tall appear, filled half-way with a bright yellow bever- age. I take a sip. It's fruity with a hard-hitting aftertaste. "This, my friend, is near impossible to get. It cost me two thousand credits to get my hands on a bottle with about four of what I gave you in it." "Well, John's driving tonight. Oogh, and probably tomorrow too..." I moan. Shooter Dude and Blasterman can take that stuff. I'll stick with those "wimpy" bar drinks. "Have it your way, I like the stuff." "That's cause you can afford it." I think the drunkenness is starting to hit me. Uuuhhhh... "I'm leaving tonight anyways, there's something going on in Opelus I think I should attend to." "Have fun. I'm going to spend the next week with my head in the toilet." I'm not kidding. "I'll tell John to flush if you fall asleep. Ciao!" He leaves. I'm going to try to waddle back to the ship and go to bed. I think I'm on the right track. Whoa, that's a lot of black... Chapter II: "Idiots" Was an Understatement --May 19th, 4062-- Oogh. I don't know what happened last night but I'm half-asleep with my head over the toilet. I think I hear Doc Curtis sitting behind me tapping away at a computer pad. "Hgheehh...," I say. I think I broke my vocal chords. "Ah, you're awake. While you were unconscious I did a little chemical purging on you. You were drunker than an alcoholic hobo locked in a bar after hours!" Curtis says. "Bhelehh??" I ask. I meant to ask about what happened after the blackness and before the toilet being used as my bed. "Well, you stumbled into the ship and I saw you collapse. So I picked you up and dragged you to here, where we've both spent the last five hours. And before you ask, I guessed you'd ask me what happened." That's quite weird that he knew that. I guess he just knows me and my weak liver, being my doctor. "Hkehh," I groan. I am never drinking that stuff again. Whatever it was. "You want me to fix your vocal chords?" I nod. Curtis grabs a little blue gas and pops it into a nearby spray injector. "This will tingle a bit," Curtis says. He's right, it does tingle. "OW!!" I scream. There's a pain shooting up my throat and into my head, as if I didn't have a bad enough headache already. "Problem solved, am I right?" Curtis laughs. "This isn't, ow, funny! Ow!" I thought that doctors were supposed to be nice. I stumble into the cockpit. John's playing solitaire using the holographic HUD on the cockpit window. "G'morning," he says. "How was the first use of that new toilet?" "Oh, bite me. You'll be intoxicated as hell, but what do I care?" I mumble back. "Already was, Curtis zapped me with the magic blue stuff a few hours ago. You were passed out in the white bowl of liver purging at that point." I sit down. I'm feeling better now. "Betcha I can fly without crashing," I say, smiling. "You're on!" John punches me in the arm. I ask the station if we can leave. The commander decompresses the hangar and opens the doors. Time for some fun. I pull back on the throttle, put the sublight engines in "charge" mode, enable the ADTSes, and rev her up. Mehahaha! John looks at me with an evil smirk. I think he thinks I'm insane. I drop the mode on the engines to regular and the ship lurches forward. I look in the "rear-view mirror" and see that we just made a multi-thousand kilometre burst out of the doors and into the void. "There was just a one in six hundred chance that you would make that flight, you idiot," the computer says to me. I don't remember her having an attitude. "Setting course for direction... eighty-nine-mark-oh-two. Location... Blarius sector 48A of current decadrant. Should be a patrol or two there!" I say. "We will be there in two days." References * Kilathian spirits * ADTS: Anti-dilative temporal stabilizers Category:Books